Safeguarding UK's best-loved fruit: immunity diversity in banana cultivars

Banana cultivars are a staple food for more than 400 million people worldwide. Panama disease annihilated the dominant export cultivar 'Gros Michel' in the 1950s and caused significant loses in Central and South American economies until its replacement with the Cavendish variety. History is repeating itself. A new race, TR4, has devastated Cavendish plantations in Asia and was firstly identified in America in Colombia in 2019. Farmers face an imminent risk and require resilient crops.
The project will answer fundamental questions on the diversity of immunity NLR receptors in bananas and plantains (Musa genus), and the relation of this diversity with ploidy and genome composition and response to Panama disease, a devastating fungal vascular disease in bananas. The project will identify candidate genes to contribute to developing resistant varieties.